Question

I would like to create a so-called matching vector consisting of binaries. All numbers should be zero unless elements belong to the same variable.

Here’s an example:

dataset=("a","b","c","d","x","y","z")
var1=c("a","b","y","z")
var2=c("c","d","x")

Thus, I have a dataset with all the variables in the first line. Now I create two groups: var1 and var2.

The matching vector for the element “a” is supposed to look like:

matching_a=c(1,1,0,0,0,1,1)

The numbers correspond to my dataset. If the variables in my dataset are in the same group, there should be a 1 in my matching vector, and a 0 otherwise.

However, my actual data set is too big to do it manually. Does anyone understand what I wanna do?

Answer 1

Using ifelse function and %in% operator.

matching_a <-  ifelse(dataset %in% var1, 1, 0)

matching_a
# [1] 1 1 0 0 0 1 1